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The Epic of Gilgamesh

You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping.

Before we get started, mongrels, we're not talking about the recurring Final Fantasy and Fate/stay night characters. (Even though the latter IS Gilgamesh.) Now then...

A legend from ancient Babylon and Akkad, the epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest heroic epic that survives to this day and is very much Older than Dirt. Even older than The Iliad and The Bible. In fact, The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest written narrative ever discovered — thus making it the Ur Example of quite literally every trope found within it.

Gilgamesh is the super strong, ruggedly handsome, two-thirds god and one-third mortal king of Uruk, King Of Heroes, and he is bored. He spends his free time sleeping with each new bride the night of her wedding, which their husbands are not too happy about, but he is the king, and he can do what he wants. The people of Uruk beg the gods to provide Gilgamesh with something better to do. The gods decide that what the restless, powerful, adventure-hungry hero needs is a best friend and Worthy Opponent. So they have the womb goddess Aruru make a wild man named Enkidu, who lives out in the wilderness among the animals, annoying farmers and hunters. One of them convinces a temple harlot Shamhat to make a civilized man out of him, by sleeping with him for a week. After his first taste of sex, Shamhat convinces Enkidu to come back with her to the temple and learn how to live like a civilized human, promising she will introduce him to a best friend so he'll never be lonely again. He accepts.

So Gilgamesh and Enkidu become inseparable friends (after beating each other to a pulp in the streets). To celebrate, Gilgamesh decides they should go on an adventure to the Forest of Cedars, defeat the guardian monster Humbaba, and cut down the giant cedar. Why? Why not, when you only live once. Against the advice of everybody, they go through with it.

The partners have their next adventure when Gilgamesh turns down the goddess Ishtar's offer to sleep with her, noting the unsavory fates that befall her lovers, and she retaliates by unleashing the Bull of Heaven on Uruk. The two heroes manage to slay it, which the gods aren't too happy about and decide Enkidu will have to die because of this.

His friend's death only intensifies Gilgamesh's fear of dying and hatred of his own mortality — curse those one-third mortal genes! There's only one thing to do — go to the ends of the Earth and find the secret of eternal life. His advisors tell him that's crazy and that he should get over it. The Scorpion Men who guard the underground tunnel that the sun uses to reach the other side of the Earth every night tell him to turn back and get over it. Siduri, keeper of the inn at the end of the tunnel, tells him to stop causing himself so much stress and enjoy life while he has the chance and get over his obsession. Utanapishtim, the survivor of the great flood who was made immortal, tells Gilgamesh immortality isn't for humans and he should get over his crazy wish of living forever. Sensing the pattern yet?

To make a long story short, Gilgamesh ultimately fails Utanapishtim's test of staying awake for seven nights (he doesn't even last seven seconds). But Utanapishtim's wife convinces him to be nice and give the seeker something for his trouble. So he tells Gilgamesh where to find a plant that will grant eternal life and youth. The good news is he finds it. The bad news is a snake eats it when he takes a break on the way home to bathe. Tough luck. Looks like Gilgamesh the Not So Invincible After All has to come to terms with the fact that We Are As Mayflies and content himself with the beauty and majesty of his mighty kingdom. Or he could always go back for more.

Some versions have him decide that the only way to live forever is by becoming a legend and living on in memory. When it comes to that kind of immortality, he succeeded.

As noted, this is the oldest surviving written story in existence. (That is to say, currently. There may be older manuscripts which archaeologists have yet to discover, but for now, Gilgamesh is it.) Thus, all of the tropes on this page are Ur Examples.

This legend provides examples of:

The Ace: Gilgamesh.
Arc Number: Seven comes up a lot.
Authority Equals Asskicking: King Gilgamesh.
BFS:
"They cast great daggers
Their blades were 120 pounds each
The cross guards of their handles thirty pounds each
They carried daggers worked with thirty pounds of gold
Gilgamesh and Enkidu bore ten times sixty pounds each."
Bittersweet Ending
Character Development: The introduction implies that after his adventure, Gilgamesh became a decent king.
Coming of Age Story
Contractual Immortality: The gods put it to a vote about whether Gilgamesh or Enkidu should die. One guess who they choose...
Dead Sidekick: Gilgamesh completely falls apart after Enkidu's death.
Death by Sex: Enkidu blames Shamhat for leading him to an early death by seducing him. And Ishtar's lovers all died because of her, as noted below.
Defeat Means Friendship: How Enkidu and Gilgamesh meet and become best buddies: by beating the crap out of each other.
Determinator: Gilgamesh.
Diabolus ex Machina: Apparently, Happily Ever After is Newer Than They Think.
Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: After killing the Bull of Heaven, Enkidu throws its 'hindquarters' in Ishtar's face.
Downer Ending: It was the first story of a hero going through every trial, a heroic journey to try to achieve something, and in the end, he failed. What message does that send?
- This is actually a staple of hero epics in itself, enough so that it occupies threads 16-20 of Lord Raglan's 22-part Hero Pattern. The hero typically fails or is abandoned or goes into exile due to the general shittiness of mankind, and then dies on top of a hill (or other high place), signifying that they were in fact too good for this sinful Earth. See Jesus, Moses, Krishna, Romulus, Hercules, the Prince of Wei, etc. The more divine and greater than human a hero is, the more likely they are to die alone and unloved (until their story is remembered in epic verse). Contrast Achilles and Ulysses, for instance.
- It really isn't a downer ending, as Gilgamesh comes to realize that mortality is the lot of all mankind and responds to this information by building high his city walls (i.e. creating works that perpetuate mankind and expand upon our knowledge.)
- Having the hero fail is what proves this is a civilized peoples' tale, not merely the account of a tribal folk hero.
Dream Sequence: Several.
Dual Wielding: Gilgamesh uses a sword and an axe, sometimes both at once.
Femme Fatale: The goddess Ishtar.
Final Fantasy: This series implies that the dimension-hopping eight-armed warrior that appears in certain games IS the original epic hero, still seeking immortality and ultimate power.
Flowery Insults: When Enkidu curses Shamhat for indirectly leading to his death, he lets off a whole string of these, which (in at least one translation) ends with the... memorable "May the drunkard soil with his vomit any place you enjoy."
Genre Savvy: Gilgamesh, when it comes to sleeping with Ishtar.
Get On With It Already: Most of the long speeches are palatable enough, but there are a handful that get repeated verbatim to several people. On the other hand, this probably shouldn't be too surprising as the work was originally "written" on clay tablets with pictographs impressed into them while still wet. Likely the "template" for these speeches was reused. Ur Example of Copy Paste?
- A more likely reason is that despite having been written down and codified, the epic was derived from oral sources and for most people continued to be oral storytelling. Back then most people were illiterate, after all. Repetitions, rhyme and such are essentially mnemonic devices to help people repeat the story verbatim from memory. Repetition is also a common stylistic element of oral storytelling, used for pacing, emphasis and symmetry. Think of song refrains, fairy tales and the like.
  - Recent studies have suggested that people in ancient Mesopotamia (and Egypt) were surprisingly literate. Even so, every tablet had to be hand copied, so some repetitiveness no doubt helped keep things straight and prevent errors.
God Emperor: Gilgamesh again (well, they did name it after him). It also points out how the Sumerian kings are specifically not this.
Going to See the Elephant: Why did Gilgamesh drag Enkidu on a mission to defeat Humbaba and cut down the giant cedar? Because it was there! *
It's entirely possible that the reason is in one of the missing sections.
- According to Bilgames and Ḫuwawa, the Sumerian original, it's for glory and by Utu's suggestion.
Half-Human Hybrid: Well, "one third human" hybrid, anyway. Yeah, genetically not possible, but it works if you take into account that the ancient Babylonians didn't know about genetics: divine + divine + human = 2/3 divine and 1/3 human.
- He could have been the product of, say, a divine/human breeding experiment where he is the tenth generation descendant of pairings involving 1365 out of 2048 8xgreat-grandparents who were divine, yielding someone who is 66.65% divine. Close enough for government work!
Heroic BSOD: He could have gone back for more of the Flower of Youth, but turns out having everyone say something is impossible and reckless, going out and doing it, then having it snatched away at the last second can change your outlook on things a bit.
Homoerotic Subtext: Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Honestly, do things ever change?
- This is another one of those "life was really different 4,000 years ago" things, but sexual orientation as we know it didn't really exist back then. It's pretty strongly hinted in some translations that Gilgamesh and Enkidu WERE in fact lovers. Sandar's translation gives a line from the Coming of Enkidu as; "When you see him you will be glad; you will love him as a woman and he will never forsake you."
Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Shamhat
If You Ever Do Anything To Hurt Her: Ishtar runs crying to her father after Gilgamesh spurns her, so he gives her the Bull of Heaven to terrorize Uruk in revenge. He only does it because Ishtar was being a Bratty Teenage Daughter about it, even after he warned her that making the Bull will cause a seven-year drought.
I Love You Because I Can't Control You
Immortality Seeker: Gilgamesh spends a good chunk of the story trying to win immortality.
Jumped at the Call: Gilgamesh has a craving for adventure.
Kill Him Already: After Gilgamesh defeats the Humbaba and has him at knife-point, Humbaba begs for mercy. Gilgamesh seems ready to grant it, but his friend Enkidu persuades him to get on with it.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Gilgamesh doesn't.
Lost Episode: Thanks to the very old age of the work, the story had to be reconstructed from various fragments on tablets. Not all of them have been found.
Making a Splash: Gilgamesh goes to find the survivors of the flood, who were granted immortality.
A Man Is Not a Virgin: Enkidu isn't really truly human until Shamhat has sex with him.
Mood Swinger: Ishtar. At least Gilgamesh was Genre Savvy enough to know not to sleep with someone who's goddess of love by night, but goddess of war by day...
More Expendable Than You
Narrative Poem: The Ur Example
The Nothing After Death: Irkalla, the underworld, isn't fun.
Overprotective Dad
Our Giants Are Bigger: Humbaba — "His maw is fire, his breath is death... Who, even among gods, could attack him?"
Outrun the Fireball: Possibly the last trope in the world you'd expect to be Older than Dirt, but there it is: on his journey to Dilmun, Gilgamesh had to pass through the tunnel through which the sun goes at night. The tunnel was long, and before he could get to the other end, the sun god entered from the other side... If that's not a fireball to outrun, I don't know what is.
Rule Of Cool: Two-thirds god...
Science Marches On: The "two-thirds god" thing can be a head-scratcher, until you learn that ancient Sumerians believed that if a woman became pregnant after sleeping with multiple partners, all of them helped father the child.
Semi Divine: Gilgamesh is two-thirds god.
Sex As Rite-Of-Passage: Shamhat and Enkidu
Spanner in the Works: That darn snake...
Super Strength: Gilgamesh has it.
Threshold Guardians: The Scorpion Men.
Tragic Bromance: Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
Ur Example: Since this is literally the oldest written story that scholars know of, almost all of the examples on this page fall into this category.
- Which, ironically, takes place in Uruk, not Ur.
Walking the Earth: Gilgamesh after Enkidu's death.
We Are As Mayflies
Who Wants to Live Forever?
Wild Hair: Enkidu has it.
Woman Scorned: Ishtar
Worthy Opponent: Enkidu and Gilgamesh.
Yandere: Ishtar.
You Can't Fight Fate: You can't escape your mortality (unless you're Utnapishtim).
Zombie Apocalypse: Ishtar threatens to knock down the doors of the underworld to bring the dead up, who will eat the living.